I brought to our reader's attention a re-paving project, which is still scheduled to begin in May. In the previous article I shared some pictures with you of the red shoulders in Southern California, and Colorado. I met with Cal Trans project engineer - Heidi Quintrell, about the red pigment color. Heidi wanted to express that "the pictures did not reflect the true color that we would be using locally".

My goal with including the pictures was to just give the readers a sense of what this looks like in other communities, not to show a true color. I regret this mistake, and apologize if I conveyed the wrong message to our readers. As stated in the original article (linked above) Cal Trans will be using federal color 30075. I'm including a link here to give some sense of federal color 30075.

During my visit with Heidi, I was shown a very small sample of the colorization. This sample showed the red color on one side, and the motor lane black color on the other side. In my opinion looking at it in the office on such a small scale, it was hard to imagine how this federal color 30075 will look in the real time application. 30075 looked more like a cross between brown/red, and not a significant difference from the motor lane black color (on the small scale sample piece). I'm anticipating the color difference will be more obvious on the larger scale application. In the original article (linked above) Todd Lark said, "it would be a brick type color". Green Wheels looks forward to seeing how this colorization turns out looking in the real time application.

I asked Heidi if Cal Trans had done any studies - on how this colorization, changes motorists driving behavior? Heidi was not aware of any studies in regards to this, and that this is a very new treatment being used by Cal Trans. So Green Wheels would like bicycle commuter's feedback after this colorization has been implemented. I also confirmed with Heidi that the material being used will be the same on the shoulder, and motor travel lanes(so it should be a smooth non motorized surface).

Long-term projects:

Also as part of the original article we asked our readers to sign a petition, created by Humboldt Baykeepers. This petition asked Cal Trans to delay a hearing with the coastal commission. This delay would allow the hearing to be held locally, rather then out of the area, later in the year. I wanted to give our readers an up update on the outcome of this petition.

I recently contacted Scott Burger of Cal Trans. Scott is the public information officer with our district 1, Cal Trans office.

I asked Scott - to please provide us an update, on what was the current status of the public's request to delay the coastal commission hearing?

Melanie Williams, Bicycle Educator and Consultant, and owner of Bikesthere.com, will demonstrate the need for bike friendly business practices, as well as the need to designate cities as Bike Friendly Communities. She will also highlight several programs designed to create and improve Safe Routes to local schools and provide tools for how to implement bike friendly practices.